It was a lovely, lovely day today. Hot enough for popsicles but not so bad that you couldn't play outside. In fact, everyone was outside. I think many of the parents who usually drive to pick their kids up from school walked and that's why we ended up with four different kids hanging out at our house.

We had the playdate with K. planned for over a month. This has been a serious problem actually. Her dad asked us to help with a childcare glitch which we readily agreed to. K. is always inviting Rose over and I wanted to even things out. Except, the last time K. was over Rose was awful—refusing to do anything K. suggested, fighting over who got out of the car first, eventually abandoning her. K. adores Rose and Rose does not adore K. Too bad. Sometimes, you have to be generous in your friendships. I prepped Rose pretty seriously about being a good host.

Things started out badly when I said let's play in the playground and K said yes and Rose said no! But from that moment on the two were never alone together. They had a couple squabbles, but just when Rose was about to throw a temper tantrum about who got to open the door, friends from school walked by on their way home.

So, I. and Z. and their mom hung out on the porch with us, and amazingly, no one complained that there were only lime popsicles left. We all played slide on the banister next to our front steps, and David only got dropped a couple times.

David was devastated when K. left, he'd been looking forward to her visit all day, but a few minutes later, W. dropped by. We had walked part of the way home with him and his grandma and reminded her that we really only lived around the corner from them. Rose was much more chipper with him than with K. John played some wild game of basketball baseball in the backyard.

I don't know if it's the age of the kids, living in the city, or the times, but we do not play with the neighborhood kids as much as I would like. It was really fun to do it today.